All posts tagged: Gender

The blue jellybeans were assembled in pint-sized mason jars on my kitchen table. My husband was about to head to the store to pick up the balloon bouquet while I put finishing touches on the decorations. The kids and I had made a batch of homemade chocolate ice cream, and the giant, freshly baked chocolate chip cookie was frosted in blue with our son’s new name: Max Grayson. “It’s A Boy!” read the banner across the wall and on the sign in the front yard. We were thrilled to welcome so many excited guests to our home for “Baby Shower 2.0.” We had already thrown our child a baby shower back in 2008, back when we named him Mary Grace and thought he was our daughter. Our son is nine years old now and has been telling us he is a boy since he was two. Once we were able to finally recognize that he was transgender — a process that was neither fast nor easy — and then took the steps necessary to officially …

I got a phone call last week from someone at my endocrinologist’s office. He asked to speak to Jennifer. “This is Jennifer,” I sighed. After a moment of confused silence he said, “I’m sorry, is this Jennifer?” My voice is getting deeper. He wouldn’t have been so confused if he had actually thought about the message he was calling to give me: My new prescription for testosterone was ready to be picked up. The first time I thought I knew who I was, my name was Jennifer and I believed I was a lesbian. I was born in 1971 and came of age before the internet, so give me credit for getting that close to figuring shit out. Back then, there were few words to describe the feelings I was having, and they weren’t used around children. The words themselves were considered too adult. No one on TV admitted to feeling like me, but I found my trail of breadcrumbs. Buddy on Family. Jo on Facts of Life. Martina Navratilova. That cute girl in Dragonslayer …

(Graphic: Helen Jane Hearn/TueNight) I have been running away from my body for my entire life. For as long as I can remember, I was never very happy with the body I was born into. Even before my gender issues began to emerge, I was always the chubby kid — husky-sized suits and all. Yes, I was teased. Relentlessly so, for quite a while when I was young. The mocking jokes from my so-called friends cut like a knife. But I persevered, or so I thought. Unless you have walked a mile in my heels, it’s very difficult to explain what it is like to wake up every morning of your life knowing — really knowing — on a very visceral level that something’s just not aligned correctly. Something’s a little off – askance, as it were. It became quite apparent to me as I reached my teenage years that this was most definitely NOT the body that I signed up for. The realization scared me to death. It was like out of nowhere, I …